Medicine Show

Comment about the Republicans' attempt to cut Medicare. A year ago, the Republicans were confident that they had got rid of the entire idea of overhauling the health-care system. In a twist of certain rough justice, the Republicans now find themselves tormented by the same subject. Furthermore, what they are proposing bears an uncanny resemblance to their caricature of what Clinton was supposedly trying to do to health care: downsize it, coerce it, and ration it. The Republicans' balanced budget depends upon huge cuts in Medicare. In order to pay for their $245-billion tax cut, they plan to scale back Medicare by $270 billion over seven years. If the Republicans cannot achieve their desired cuts in Medicare, they cannot get the tax cuts unless they scramble to slash elsewhere--sqeezing more from Medicaid, another volatile issue, and thus setting the contesting intra-party factions and Presidential candidates loose on an uncharted budget battlefield. The main Republican tactic now is to foster an atmosphere of apocalypse, by raising the cry that Medicare is headed for "bankruptcy." In June, the pollster Frank Luntz, whose research shaped the Contract with America, circulated a detailed eight-page memo among the House Republicans entitled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Communicating Medicare." Luntz warned that older voters would never accept changes in Medicare until they were "convinced the system's going broke." The relatively wealthy might be able to manage these increases, but the notion of generating large cuts in Medicare by tapping the affluent is a fantasy. Most of the eighty-three per cent [of Medicare ex-penditures], in fact, goes to those with incomes below fifteen thousand dollars. The congressional Democrats, now the minority, are enjoying the spectacle of the Republicans' discomfort. Of course, the only way to reduce Medicare costs without threatening coverage would be to cut the costs of health care over all. But that would demand a retooling of the entire system--something the Republicans rejected in 1994. The Republicans are posing as the protectors of Medicare, but their plan would mean scaling it back drastically. The writer quotes both Sen. Dole and Rep. Gingrich in article.